One of the key factors that make a home great to live in is insulation. Homes are meant to be comfortable, and when you can keep your indoor temperature ideal for rest and relaxation, you naturally have a better home living experience.
One of the best ways to achieve good insulation within your home is by opting for polystyrene insulation. Polystyrene sheets offer maximum value for its cost, weight, and the overall effort it requires to install them. In this article, learn the advantages of using polystyrene as your home’s insulator.
What is Polystyrene?
The material Polystyrene itself should be familiar as it is used in so many products. Everything from coffee cups to food containers to product packaging is made using polystyrene foam. It is a form of hard, solid plastic. Polystyrene is created when styrene, a building-block chemical, is polymerised or held together. It can be made into foam material as Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) or Extruded Polystyrene (XPS.) Polystyrene foam is often made of roughly 95 percent air.
How does the polystyrene insulation process work?
Polystrene sheets contain micro air bubbles. Polystyrene is a poor heat conductor but a good convector. When warm air or heat energy moves through these sheets, these micro air bubbles effectively trap warm air, making it difficult for warm air to move through the sheets. This is why, with polystyrene insulation, your indoors will stay cool during the summer or warm during the winter.
Advantages of Polystyrene Insulation
It is known to be an excellent thermal insulator.
Polystyrene can achieve high R value (R value refers to ‘resistance to heat flow.’) Relatively thicker EPS foams offer high R value while XPS foams have much higher ratings. EPS foams will soak up moisture, but for as long as they are fitted with a vapour barrier, their R value should not be affected. XPS foams, on the other hand, are denser and have better moisture resistance, which is why their R value is generally higher.
Polystyrene sheets also act as noise reducers.
When polystyrene is your insulation of choice, you can essentially manage both heat and noise within your indoors. When polystyrene teams up with other materials such as structural insulated panels, they become effective acoustic blockers.
Polystyrene insulation helps you manage your energy cost.
Because the foam itself is already effective at maintaining ideal indoor temperatures, this means that you will spend less on air–conditioning, heaters, and other ventilation appliances. This is also better for the environment, since these appliances often emit harmful substances into the air when in use. With polystyrene insulation, you can keep safe and snug indoors while enjoying natural sources of heating or cooling, optimised of course by your polystyrene sheets.
Installation is quick and easy.
Whether you are a builder working on a new home or a DIY homeowner who would like to improve their home’s insulation, installing polystyrene should not be too big a task. The simplest summary of its installation would be that you simply cut the foams according to the measurements of your structural integrated panels, joists, purlins, or rafters, and then fit them in.
It is also recommended that you cut the foams to a few millimetres longer than the frames you will be fitting them in so that they hold in place. While they can sometimes hold their own with just friction, there may be a need to use adhesives to hold them in place.
It saves you money.
Not only is polystyrene easy to install, but it is also cheap and very accessible. If you need to insulate a larger surface (such as a roof or a wall), you will save more money by using polystyrene sheets as you can purchase a higher quantity of them even with a limited budget.
In terms of the cost of installation, in general, because it is easy to install, many homeowners opt to go the DIY route, and so the cost of labour is eliminated. But of course, if you would like to achieve the best possible results within a specific time frame, enlisting the help of professionals would still be a great idea for you.
Polystyrene is an environmentally friendly option.
Plastic, in general, can be bad for the environment, but the good news is that polystyrene is recyclable – your polystyrene provider may collect your cuttings as they will recycle these to make new sheets. Also, polystyrene does not contain ozone-depleting CFCs, and harmful substances are not used or produced in the manufacture of these products as well.
Need new polystyrene sheets for your home’s insulation? Check out Insulsqueeze today
We at Queensland Polystyrene Specialists proudly design and manufacture Insulsqueeze, high-quality easy-to-install polystyrene sheets for your DIY needs. Insulsqueeze’s cut-to-size panels will seamlessly fit into your garage doors, roof or wall purlins, underfloor joists, batons, and rafters. We have patented Insulsqueeze and are proud to have our product help many Australian families stay comfortable in their homes.
Ask us about our products today. Call us at 07 3274 1194 or email us at sales@qldpoly.com.au.
